Electric service
Started: 2024-09-27 22:07:12
Submitted: 2024-09-28 00:38:55
Visibility: World-readable
A new Caltrain train, and an old MUNI streetcar
On Saturday, the 21st of September, Caltrain began a new era with the introduction of its all-electric service running between San Jose and San Francisco. This included a new schedule to take advantage of the new fleet, with better service on weekends (two trains per hour! The all-stations stopping service only takes 79 minutes between San Jose and San Francisco!). They planned a series of events along the transit corridor on the weekend. I heading out to ride the train on Saturday when I checked the traffic and Google Maps indicated there had been a collision somewhere on highway 17 south of Los Gatos and it would take an extra hour to drive across the mountain into San Jose. I was not willing to sit in that much traffic so I shuffled my weekend plans and went to ride the new electric trains on Sunday.
I pulled into the parking lot at San Jose-Diridon station as a red-and-white train was crossing the bridge north of the station to begin its run to San Francisco. On the new weekend schedule the next train was just a half-hour later, which gave me plenty of time to walk up and down the platform looking at the new EMU on the opposite track (already displaying the number of the train that would depart in an hour) and the Amtrak California diesel locomotive on the other side waiting for the next Capitol Corridor train northbound to Sacramento. The track in front of my platform was empty, and remained empty as the platform filled up with people waiting for the train. It looked like the promise of new electric trains (and free service on the opening weekend) was drawing out families to see the trains for the first time in regular service.
I watched a train pull through the station without stopping on another track, visible in the distance as cab car #306. This train is now named after local congress-person Anna Eshoo from Atherton, who represents one of the districts that Caltrain serves. (I saw the train again in the maintenance facility north of the station, as I was riding north past the station in my train.)
I began to wonder if I ought to be worried that my train wasn't waiting at the platform for me, until I remembered that one train per hour started at Tamien, the next station south. My train eventually arrived, appearing in the distance at the throat of the station, then crossing the tracks to pull into my platform a minute behind schedule.
I got a seat in the cab car at the southern end of the train, #318, for the ride north towards San Francisco. I split my time between watching the industrial scenery out the window and working on my blog post about seeing Green Day, which included a side quest on Caltrain. At every station more families were waiting to board the trains running in both directions, and I saw tables set up to celebrate the start of electric service. The new trains were spacious and clean, and accelerated gracefully out of the stations; but just as soon as we hit cruising speed we began decelerating again for the next station. There are 21 stations in the 46 miles between San Jose and San Francisco with weekend service, and every train stops at every station. This avoids leaving anyone out, but it doesn't make the train a drop-in replacement for driving to the city on the weekend.
I didn't carefully check the time as we made every station stop northbound on the peninsula, but by the time we arrived in San Francisco we were noticeably behind schedule. I joined the crowd on the platform walking towards the concourse, and stopped to take pictures along the way of my first arrival in San Francisco on a Caltrain EMU, and the first weekend of regular EMU service.
I didn't have a clear plan for my time in San Francisco; the journey up the peninsula on the train was most of the point. I caught an N-Judah train to the Embarcadero and walked to the Ferry Building. I ate tofu tacos outside looking over the bay, then headed to the plaza in front of the Ferry Building where MUNI was celebrating its heritage weekend in front of the little MUNI museum (which I've somehow never actually visited). There was a very long line for the Blackpool boat trams running in a loop on the Embarcadero, and much shorter lines for various other historic buses and trams running on various routes. As I walked into the plaza MUNI's first-ever streetcar pulled up and began boarding passengers, so I stepped up and boarded to see where it would take me.
The historic streetcar from 1912 had been meticulously restored inside and out, though the restoration had clearly taken the approach of getting the streetcar back into running condition (replacing parts as necessary, but with materials that matched the originals) rather than preserving the decay of the original. The seats were a springy wicker, and the forward-facing bench seats had back rests that could be moved to point the seat in the direction of travel. Some of the chairs had been arranged to create a group of four seats facing each other, but the gap between the benches didn't provide much space for four people to sit.
The streetcar operated a special scenic loop heading back out on the Embarcadero to Pier 39, then turning back to where we started. On the way we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers, with the caveat that we weren't going all the way to Fisherman's Wharf like a normal F-line streetcar, but the heritage ride was free. On our loop back we passed the two boat trams from Blackpool behind us, packed with passengers riding in the open-air trams originally built for the English seaside resort city.
I got out of the tram when we returned to the Ferry Building, and stepped across the tracks to get a picture of the historic streetcar sitting among the high-rise buildings on the Embarcadero, a living symbol of a city constantly reinventing itself.
My ride up the Embarcadero and back took almost an hour. By this point it was time to head back down the peninsula, but the MUNI schedule didn't seem to be especially well-coordinated with the Caltrain schedule. Instead of taking MUNI to the Caltrain terminal in time to catch the next train, I rode BART to Milbrae and caught the same train there to head back to San Jose. On the same day I got to ride the new Caltrain EMUs on their first weekend of regular service, and MUNI's first streetcar, bracketing the new and old and giving me an excuse to celebrate transit.
